Main Edition
US
FR
'Business-as-usual.' (MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)
Following the October 7 atrocities, the imperative to respond in fury was irresistible, and Israel’s Prime Minister reached immediately for the blunt instrument of his formidable war machine, vowing to break Hamas’s back. But, as Clausewitz noted, war is not ultimately about killing people and destroying things: it is a means to achieve political objectives. After the war ends, what next?
Don’t look to Netanyahu for the answer. He has been clear about the war’s objective: to destroy Hamas, particularly its military wing, the Izzedine ad-Din al-Qassem Brigades. Some of his far-Right politicians have gone further, calling for the levelling of Gaza, perhaps even with nuclear weapons, or expelling its entire population. But these amount to more of the same: rage-fuelled impulses. Neither Netanyahu nor anyone else in Israel’s government (some key members of the political opposition joined the cabinet after October 7) has yet articulated a coherent post-war strategy for Gaza, let alone for the larger dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. This failure bodes ill for both communities.
Even if the IDF eviscerates Hamas, Israel’s leaders will — regardless of whether Netanyahu survives politically — have to figure out how to organise Gaza in order to create and sustain stability there. Departing in haste from a place, large swathes of which have been reduced to rubble, will elicit universal condemnation. Worse, that step will not produce conditions within Gaza that increase Israel’s security, the justification for the war from the outset. The United States could walk away from its failed wars of regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya; those countries are distant from the American homeland. Israel cannot do the same with its neighbour.
Israel could decide to stay and occupy Gaza indefinitely. But given how much death and destruction has been wrought, IDF soldiers will police a hostile population of 2.3 million people, some proportion of whom will eventually turn to armed resistance, even if leaderless. The Israeli army has demonstrated, more than once, that it has the firepower to quell revolts; but heavy-handed repression coupled with a prolonged occupation will beget a self-sustaining cycle of violence out of which, in time, a variant of Hamas will emerge. The more draconian Israel’s occupation, the more likely a renewed intifada of sorts — one that will most probably spread to the West Bank. This means Israel will end up policing two Palestinian territories, resorting regularly to arrests, interrogations and military raids — all without diminishing Palestinians’ determination for a state they can call their own. Moreover, the United States, the one country truly indispensable to Israel, has already stated that an occupation of Gaza would be unacceptable, save for a “transition period”.
As an alternative, a multinational peacekeeping force could be deployed in Gaza. But which countries will provide troops to patrol Gaza indefinitely given the calamitous conditions? The United States, Britain and France have been involved in discussions. But these countries have long been staunch supporters of Israel, and Gazans will understandably see their soldiers as Israel’s enforcers, if not impartial protectors. Deploying an all-Arab force might be a way around that problem, but because Israel’s war has aroused intense anger across the Middle East, the region’s rulers will be skittish about being seen as collaborators. And Egypt, a potential leading candidate in a peacekeeping operation, has joined Israel in blockading Gaza for nearly 20 years, inflicting tremendous suffering on its people, who are unlikely to welcome its troops. A UN peacekeeping force could be the answer. Yet the historical record casts doubt — Bosnia and Rwanda, for example — on their capacity to restore and maintain order in the face of large-scale violence, which cannot be ruled out in Gaza.
More fundamentally, peacekeeping troops, no matter their nationality, cannot provide day-to-day governance any more than a city’s police force can run the quotidian operations required for basic services, such as healthcare, education and housing (to say nothing of managing war-shattered Gaza’s reconstruction). Administering the territory in a manner that eventually meets the minimal needs of its citizens will be a multi-year task at minimum, and will require a government with local roots and popular legitimacy. Israel will understandably not allow any role for Hamas, but it has also ruled out one for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. In any case, the PA commands scant respect among Palestinians. A recent poll found that a majority believes it should be dissolved and that it serves Israel’s interests more than theirs. That owes partly to the failure of its negotiations with Israel (since the 30-year-old Oslo Accords) to produce anything that remotely resembles a Palestinian state, or even to resist the construction of Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the (continuing) evictions of Palestinians from their homes and grazing and farm lands.
A viable governing authority in post-war Gaza will, therefore, have to be staffed by local notables who have earned public goodwill and respect. But those who do enjoy grassroots esteem are precisely the ones who will worry about forsaking it by joining what Gazans may come to view as a collection of quislings propped up by Israel to do its bidding. Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel will “continue to control security” in Gaza after the war suggests that one Israeli demand could be guaranteed access to Gaza for the IDF. His statement that the IDF could remain there for “an indefinite period” suggests that Israel may ask for much more than that. Even a government run by respected Gazans will lose legitimacy if it accedes to either demand, especially the second.
Aside from Israel’s lack of a strategy for post-war Gaza, since 1996 it has not had (with some exceptions such as Ehud Barak) a leader with a plan for addressing the political aspirations of Palestinians. And its Right-ward political trajectory since the latter half of the Nineties, and especially in recent years, makes it unlikely that one will emerge without fundamental political change. Yet history and geography dictate that Israelis and Palestinians must live side by side.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis is a thinly veiled argument to let Hamas off the hook for its indisputable savagery. Israelis would be foolish to buy these arguments, as would anyone else.
The problems of this area aren’t just political, and can’t be solved by summits, peace plans, or separate states. Gazans and Israelis live in cultures that are fundamentally incompatible, furthermore, Gazans, or at least a sizable majority of them, want to see Israel destroyed.
When political solutions aren’t attainable, only military ones remain. Israelis needs to use any means necessary to destroy the notion that they can be chased out of the middle east.
Hamas’ hopes – and those of most Palestinians – must be crushed, as their hopes are for Israel’s dissolution, destruction, or death.
One hopes civilians can be kept out of harm’s way. But on a very fundamental level, this conflict can only end when one side is permanently defeated and then tightly controlled.
This likely will result a true military occupation, with actual oppression, heavy policing, and strict controls for the foreseeable future. (The laissez faire approach, in effect since 2005, resulted in a strange combination of a seaside resort and beggar state atop underground terrorist camps.)
The alternatives, as Hamas themselves have said, are continuing 10/7 style attacks, until Israel is destroyed.
Agreed.
Perhaps the author doesn’t realize that one of his sentences contains the inevitable answer and eventual workable outcome of the war.
“Administering the territory that eventually meets the minimal needs of its citizens will be a multi-year task at minimum….”
If one lives next to an ancient neighbor whose proven self-actualizing and transcendent aspiration (within Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) is the destruction of all of those whom you hold dear, then the most reasonable action is to propel said neighbor on a speedy trajectory toward an existence on lower levels of the Hierarchy of Needs.
Once this neighbor is forced to intensely focus on their day-to-day physiological needs, then they won’t be gleefully using their wealth, ingenuity and free time to plan and action the torture and killing of your children as they sleep in their cribs.
Sure, “eventually” isn’t forever, but no solution is forever when the children of the Gaza Strip are taught from a very early age to aspire to the killing of Jews and to the elimination of Israel.
I do hope that future generations of Palestinians in Gaza will perhaps vote for a government that wants peace with their neighbor instead of voting for a government by-and-for destruction, like Hamas. Taking such a path of coexistence will deliver peace to their own lives.
But this is their choice to make, and such a distant hope as this cannot supplant the necessity of ensuring the survival of the people of Israel.
——–
As an aside, once the tunnels below Gaza are cleared and before returning to Israel, the IDF should drill numerous lateral tunnels from the Mediterranean Sea to the underground city (fracking technology has many wonderfully-inexpensive uses these days). Once the tunnel system is turned into Swiss cheese and flooded, any future coordination by Hamas 2.0 will become far harder to actualize in secret.
This is an unveiled argument to commit genocide against the Gazans.
As I have argued elsewhere:
‘I’m sure Hamas will try to regroup during a ceasefire and then, everything going the way many on here suggest, want to again launch an attack like the October one at some later date.
BUT I don’t see how a full scale invasion – even one that takes out all the leaders (many of whom aren’t even there) – will be any more successful in the long run in ending Hamas (quite the reverse given how many revenge-thirsty parents this conflict must have already created).
In anticipation of your point that this is what we did to get rid of the Nazis, well no, German bitterness at the end of the war was seen off by a ton of marshall aid and help with rebuilding efforts. Again, name me one conflict against an insurgent resistance that has ended well for the foreign offensive without some kind of peace deal? Northern Ireland? Vietnam? Afghanistan? For all this I am back to thinking a ceasefire is the best way forward, followed up by efforts from the rest of the world to try and grow the more moderate sections of Gaza (businesses), reverse the occupation of the West Bank (ie Israel’s constant breach of the supposed ceasefire over there) and perhaps some mass population exchange, in the manner of that successfully brokered between Greece and Turkey (1919-22).’
Sometimes it’s only time that can heal wounds.
Perhaps one day, we – or our distant descendants – will see peace in the Levant after the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank finally tire of starting unprovoked wars with the neighboring sovereign nation of Israel. Wars that also end up damaging their own territory and causing death amongst their citizens.
That being said, and as any student of history knows by studying recorded history, such a brutal and unprovoked act of war as the one committed by the Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip has usually led to the annihilation of the aggressor territory or state.
As a nation, Israel has shown considerable forbearance and restraint time and time again – even in the face of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes committed by the duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip during a mutually agreed-upon peacetime ceasefire with Israel.
Once the citizens of the Gaza Strip choose peaceful coexistence, Hamas leaders will grow old and grey. They’ll be congregating in assisted living facilities near the beach, and will be grumpily complaining about how the current generation of Palestinians has “grown soft” on their sworn enemies. How things were better in the years of ‘resistance’, with all of the destruction and body bags. They’ll complain about the younger generations that ignore them and that seem to be very happy pursuing their life goals in peace.
Then, while reliving their glory days in their mind, they’ll distractedly bounce their healthy-and-giggling grandchild upon their arthritic knees while sitting in their wheelchair. And then – perhaps only then – as they look into the eyes of their grandchild they’ll realize that most people want such a peaceful ending to their lives. And that peace can only come if people are not taught the ‘Oppressor’/ ‘Oppressed’ group guilt ideology that causes them to strap on a suicide vest in a state of gaslit delusion.
It also took 40 years in the wilderness – and the end of entire generations that were comfortable with idolatry – to change societal trends.
Such a lesson about time healing wounds in future generations shouldn’t be dismissed lightly.
But until then, Israel must protect itself. And the Gaza Strip will be need to be managed to a certain degree…until the people choose life.
“Once the citizens of the Gaza Strip choose peaceful coexistence, ”
You realize the citizens of Gaza make up the family members of Hamas? They are not two separate groups.
Yes.
It’s reasonable and logical to hope for the best however slim the probability might be (i.e. that a future generation of Palestinians will someday choose peace in place of destruction), but at the same time still prepare for the worst (i.e. to never allow another October 7 to occur).
Being disciplined in preparing for the worst will always take the majority of brainpower, time, energy and resources. But removing all hope for the possibility of a better – and more peaceful – future leads only to despair for the people who think such thoughts.
The good news is that one can both diligently prepare for the worst and still have hope at the same time.
“name me one conflict against an insurgent resistance that has ended well for the foreign offensive without some kind of peace deal?”
Name one conflict where the stated goal of the aggressor is to exterminate completely its victim.
Which side are you referring to? There is genocidal language on both..
Yup, that is where we are at. Leaders on both sides will need to stand up or its inevitable.
It’s an interesting thought. Obliterate Hamas with extreme prejudice and little regard for civilians, as the allies did with Nazi Germany, and then shower Gaza with money and expertise to rebuild and provide it’s population with employment. Assuming it was combined with a commitment to remove settler communities from the West Bank, it might work.
Yes we can hope. The only problem is that Germany’s Holocaust probably made it far easier to make the population accept they had been on the wrong side of history. With the Gazans however, whose grievances against Israel are far more legitimiate than those of Nazi Germany against the allies (Germany was punished after WWI but the allies didn’t maintain a blockade on them or put their fellow countrymen under an apatheid regime or illegally invade their land) this approach probably wouldn’t work as well, also in the absence of a foreign threat which the Soviet Union helpfully supplied the allies
Absolutely, well said. When the Columbia University (read: far left wing) professor is troubled that:
“Aside from Israel’s lack of a strategy for post-war Gaza, since 1996 it has not had (with some exceptions such as Ehud Barak) a leader with plan for addressing the political aspirations of Palestinians.”
We know now after 55 years of “Palestinian” (and local Muslim friends) wars and treachery, what those political aspirations are: annihilate Jews and Israel – how many Jews are welcomed in any “Palestinian” nation, past or future!
Let me just start by saying thay Hamas is a terrorist outfit, but I don’t think that it’s acceptable for a democractic nation to run an authoritarian/military regime in another country, even if it poses a threat to its existence. Not because the threat has the right to exist, but rather because running a military/“civilising” regime in Gaza seems to be counter to the very democratic values of justice and freedom that distinguish Israel from Hamas. What Netanyahu and the Israeli govt seem to have is a plan for Hamas, but not one for Palestine, and ipso facto, the existence and existential identity of the Israeli state.
By saying that Israel does not have a plan for Palestine (but one for Hamas) Inthink that Dr Menon presents a pretty valid concern about Israel’s status as a democracy that isn’t a defense of Hamas, but is a need to come up with strategies and policies that will protect the only stronghold of democracy and freedom that this region seems to have. How this could be possible without razing Gaza to the ground as Netanyahu and the Israeli hard right suggest, is a pretty valid question.
Israelophobia, published mid 2023 by Jake Wallis Simons is a great read for anyone trying to understand why the conflict is so entrenched. Ever since the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Arab world, the UN, UNWRA & many NGOs are responsible for the shoddy treatment of Arab refugees and the unfair demonisation of Israel.
You’re begging the question:
“Gazans and Israelis live in cultures that are fundamentally incompatible”
I dont see this.
“furthermore, Gazans, or at least a sizable majority of them, want to see Israel destroyed.”
Any argument you have made turns on this.
In my experience most people want to live in peace with their neighbours. There needs to be a discussion in their communities to determine if they want something different. Because burning your political capital with more terrorism is just more of the same. Where are the gazan leaders who will make a peace?
It should start in the mosques that believe in living with your neighbours.
What mosques are these, pray tell?
If there are none then the die is cast.
“The United States, Britain, and France have been involved in discussions. But these countries, have long been staunch supporters of Israel…”. France has long been a staunch supporter of Israel? Seriously? France seems to have misplaced its staunch support of Israel when, as usual, it voted at the UN, just 21 days after the Hamas attack on Israel, in favour of a Jordanian resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, which made no mention of Hamas. And, as usual, Britain abstained. If Rajan Menon is convinced that Rashida Tlaib’s “…plea was for equal rights in that space for Israeli Jews and Palestinians alike”, then he probably believes in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Kim Jong-Il’s golf scores.
well said .. Israel does have a plan for Gaza. UNWRA has watched Hamas use Qatar money to build a terror cell on Israel’s border. Israel vacated Gaza in 2005, and Israel allowed people of Gaza to go to Israel to work, and for those needing medical treatment, to be taken to Israeli hospitals. Never forget that Egypt also has a border with Gaza, but then Arabs rarely help Arabs.
Israel’s plan for Gaza is the destruction of Hamas, what ever than entails.
As to a long term plan for Gaza, literally anyone could do more for the economy of Gaza than Hamas has done. Even Egypt does a much better job. Even the PA does a much better job. And if the people of Gaza are spared the oppression, propaganda and kleptocracy they experience under Hamas, they might gradually become less inclined to political violence.
This author is simply anti-Israel because he criticises Netanyahu et al for not having a post war plan for Gaza.
On October the sixth the Israeli government did not need a post war plan because they weren’t expecting a war so how could they have a post war plan?
He wants in a matter of weeks a comprehensive plan yet I cannot think of any post war plan in any major conflict was accomplished in less than sixty days.
Menon’s analysis is biased tripe.
The article is infused with the idea that there is no plan because the forces that be (in the main – Hamas, PA, Palestinians generally, their Islamic backers) will not allow any one plan to be successful (apart from the ‘river to the sea’ one). Menon stops short of making the point clearly, falling back on the isolated statement, ‘the Israelis have no plan’.
I find this article a sophisticated defence of Hamas. It develops amnesia about the repeated intransigence of both PA and the erstwhile PLO in negotiations in recognition of Israel; as well as the efforts made by Shimon Perez and many of the Israeli Left to bring resolution.
I disagree about the effect of international peacekeeping forces. Having lived and worked in Kosovo during the UN mission, it is my experience that the option does work in extraordinary inflamed circumstances as now in Gaza. If a combination of NATO, Arab and Afro- Asian nations can be worked out as peacekeeping forces, that can certainly be a better option than handing the place back to Hamas second generation as this author hints at.
I suspect the Israeli’s will flood/destroy all the Hamas tunnels when they’re finished and build a concrete wall around Gaza like they did the West Bank and Jerusalem only with a lot more security (minefields, troops, drone patrols etc) and respond to any hostility from Gaza with overwhelming firepower.
We have already tried the high-tech wall solution. It failed spectacularly on 7th October.
One high tech solution failed.The two state solution is a non-starter. Resettlement would seem to be it
The problem with that is none of the Palestinians’ brother states actually want them. Not surprising, given the Islamic world’s history of endless sectarian warfare since their prophet died in AD 635.
Resettlement also known as ethnic cleansing. Of course the neighbours don’t want them, their refugee status would be permanent. I doubt if any have forgotten what happened to Jordan in 1970, and the Egyptians in particular won’t welcome any offshoots of the brotherhood which has plagued them for decades.
This is a parochial question. Why not be critical of actual violent “oppressors” and ask, what are the Palestinians plans? What do you plan to do without the ability to provide for yourselves? You’ve spent the last decades spending time and money on hateful and resentful activities via the hateful and resentful people you’ve put in power. You can’t defeat Israel, you can just sacrifice yourselves to entice others (who don’t even like you) to fight Israel. So it seems like their plan is to continue murder, rape, and precisely atrocious violence until they force their enemies to act further and spark a regional war, potentially a global war. So director Rajan, do you want war, or do you want to limit the violence and put a stop to those forcing war?
Put aside for a moment the truly terrible Islamo-fascist Hamas government in Gaza (voted in but then no further voting allowed). Then this discussion of realpolitik and lack of a coherent and convincing Israeli strategy is fair comment.
But the truth is, there IS no such solution possible. The Arab Muslim “side” has rejected peace overtures in 1948, 1967, 1994 etc. Of course there is no one Arab Muslim “side” in the dispute, so it is nigh on impossible to avoid one player or another – Egypt, then Syria, then the PLO, then Hamas and Iran – from not only wishing Israel to be reduced in size, but to be eliminated from the Earth. Iran is a powerful country. The Israeli government quite rightly knows that a Palestinian West Bank would hugely weaken Israel’s security – a completely sovereign Palestinian state just isn’t going to happen.
Conor Cruise O’Brien wrote a book “The Siege” I believe in 1977, making the gloomy but convincing case that two people’s are competing essentially for the same land – Israel is tiny – and there is no way round this with the degree of mistrust and hatred that has grown up. Israel has moved to the Right and its behaviour often seems unreasonable to liberal opinion – but when was peace ever offered to.any of those nice Social Democrat governments Israel used to endlessly elect?
All of the land on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was in the hands of the Arabs between 1948 and 1967. The Palestinians were given Jordanian citizenship. (Jordan had originally been part of the British mandate). This would have continued had Jordan not ignored Israeli warnings not to be one involved in the 1967 war.
Except, the Abraham Accords showed willingness by several Arab governments for a constructive relationship with Israel. Biden threw that away because it was associated with Trump, because he went back to Obama’s insane policy of trying to enlist Iran as a partner, and he kept self righteously antagonizing the Saudis.
None of the parties have (yet) renounced the Accords or their treaties with Israel. Maybe there is still hope, if the US could replace the incompetents running its foreign policy with intelligent people who are realistic, have strategic empathy for all sides, and really want progress and will work hard at it.
A long shot at this point, but just maybe…
The Siege is a brilliant book IMO.
The final point above about Jordan in the British Mandate is a good one. 4/5 of the area in the British Mandate was handed over to Abdullah, originally from Mecca, and no-one complained. Abdullah became the Emir and later the King of the thus newly formed Jordanian state. The remaining 1/5 “between the river and the sea” was then fought over by Jews and Arabs and still is. I wonder what other solutions might have worked for sharing the land in the British Mandate? Whatever anyone thinks about colonial powers these days, back then, under international law, Britain had responsibility for the whole area under the Mandate….
The link below paints some of the picture…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ByJb7QQ9U
I think arab states were choosing peace. Thats why Oct 7th happened.
They need to continue it. And not for the Israelis, but for their populations and the Gazans.
Gaza has no future.
It can’t be allowed to exist any more. The so-called Palestinians need to be relocated to any Arab land that will take them – or preferably relocated to Communist China (which is so strongly supportive of them).
They had a chance to become a Singapore, in partnership with Israel. They blew it.
80% of them support Hamas’ actions on October 7th.
Gaza has no future.
Well said James Elliott
Judging by their skin tone, I’d argue Palestinians have more right to be on that land than the white Israelis, many of whom are ethnically Russian or European
Just wondering – did Hamas have a post-atrocity strategy?
Other than martyrdom, of course
Excellent point.
As long as we keep trying the same failed solutions we are not going to get anywhere. What we haven’t tried yet is what works everywhere else in the world – resettling refugees, rather than keeping them in camps for generations and feeding them with the impossible dream that soon they will return home. The solution will start with the disbandment of UNWRA and letting UNHCR finally resettle them, like all the other millions of refugees around the world.
Yes.
Resettlement of the Palestinians elsewhere is clearly the only viable way forward
Ethnic cleansing you mean?
The people advocating for expelling the population of Gaza may have a point. We’re past the point of good solutions. Israel at this point can only choose varying degrees of horrible. The author says Israel can’t simply walk away, but I disagree. They can walk away. They can build higher walls, stouter defenses, and increase security. They can walk away now and walk back in whenever they want because they have complete military superiority over their enemies, and despite their angry rhetoric, nobody in the Muslim world is ready to go to war with Israel for the sake of the Palestinians. They have been effectively abandoned by their own people, and that’s something Israel will not fail to notice. They can simply destroy Hamas, go back to Israel, and then if the Palestinians choose a terrorist organization to govern them, they go destroy that group, and then the next, and the next, until either the Palestinians are beaten enough to choose something other than violent terrorism, or they’re all killed or forced to flee, whichever comes first. They don’t have to rebuild Gaza, they can leave it in ruins as a punishment for Oct 7th. The Palestinians have to choose to submit, truly submit, accept that they will have a tiny, marginal state perpetually dependent on the good will of Israel, or they will have nothing at all. They have to police themselves and reject terrorism to a man. They have to rebuild Gaza themselves, and stop trying to solve their problems by lobbing missiles towards Jerusalem. Israel has to keep beating them until they do these things on their own. It’s an ugly solution to an ugly conflict. The real world isn’t nice. Sometimes there isn’t a compromise that satisfies everyone. Sometimes one side or the other must be utterly, brutally, and completely defeated. The most anyone can do is look the other way.
I think eventually Gaza will become a part of Egypt like it was before. 1967. For inducement, the World will give Egypt ONE BILLION DOLLARS! (per Dr. Evil) and rights to Gaza offshore gas to take it back.
Egypt has its own problems with Islamist activists. It will certainly try to avoid 2.5 million new ones
Allen Z’s idea is worth exploring, but yes, the ghost of Anwar Sadat must be in Sisi’s thoughts.
A reasoned piece on the future of Israel and Palestine is not much use to the average Unherd commentator.
It seems to have helped the below-average.
What plan do the Palestinians have for Gaza? We have seen what those plans entail… 75 years of waste, graft and corruption. There is no proper infrastructure investment (apart from a sophisticated tunnel network), no planning for its population and no care to improve the lot of the Palestinian people.
The short answer is that nobody knows at present how to square this circle. The Jews aren’t leaving Israel, and a significant proportion of the rest of the middle east wants to kill all the Jews for refusing to leave Israel.
“Administering the territory that eventually meets the minimal needs of its citizens will be a multi-year task at minimum….”
Winner winner chicken dinner.
If one lives next door to an ancient neighbor whose proven self-actualizing and transcendent aspiration (on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) is the destruction and mutilation of all those whom you hold dear, then the most reasonable action is to propel said neighbor on a trajectory to exist on lower levels of the Hierarchy of Needs.
Once this neighbor is forced to intensely focus on their day-to-day physiological needs, then they won’t be gleefully using their wealth, ingenuity and free time to plan and action the torture and killing of your children as they sleep in their cribs.
Sure, “eventually” isn’t forever, but no solution is forever when the children of the Gaza Strip are taught from a very early age to aspire to the killing of Jews and to the elimination of Israel.
I do hope that future generations of Palestinians in Gaza will perhaps vote for a government that wants peace with their neighbor instead of voting for a government by-and-for destruction, like Hamas. Taking such a path of coexistence will deliver peace to their own lives.
But this is their choice to make, and such a hope as this cannot supplant the necessity of ensuring the survival of the people of Israel.
——–
Pro-Tip: Once the tunnels below Gaza are cleared and before returning to Israel, don’t forget to drill numerous lateral tunnels from the Mediterranean Sea to the underground city (fracking technology has many wonderfully-inexpensive uses these days). Once the tunnel system is turned into Swiss cheese and flooded, any future coordination by Hamas 2.0 will become far harder to actualize in secret.
You forget that it was the incredible amount of aid money, sent to Gaza that allowed the palestinians to realise that they could spend all their time, plotting and activating a plan for the genocide of the Jews and that plan is still in progress.
If I were an Israeli, I would not want a Palestinian State in Gaza. I would be arguing for a negotiated resettlement of Palestinians to another Arab country, such as Jordan. This would be the price that the Palestinians would need to pay for the electing of Hamas as their ‘government’. Israel has the right to exist under international law but the Palestinians are not a recognised state. They must, therefore, be either resettled to a recognised state that is not ‘at war’ with Israel in order that Israelis can be relatively safe from attack, or accept permanent occupation. I cannot see how they can otherwise guarantee Israel’s security, from their point of view.
Hamas needs to be squished. Full stop.
What the h*ll is this? Hamas had no plan for Israel after its savage attack last month. Their only “plan” was blind generational hatred and getting paid to keep it going.
Israel now has a plan for Gaza, and I sincerely hope it involves nukes.
A mess and a tragedy. There has never been a Palestinian nation date, but after 75 years one must be created. Whether it can join Gaza physically is a further problem Israel must stop new settlements and withdraw some. On the other side the new Palestine needs a huge amount of money and – more – a stable democratic government. Other Arab states must help: the reverse of their neglect since stopping wars against Israel.
Huge problems to solve. The current winner is Hamas, the very people who have made miserable the lives of Gazans. It may need a popular uprising in Iran to remove the Mullahs, freeing the great Persian people.
At last a balanced article on the subject !
Smash Hamas and then ‘Containment’ whilst time works some sort of solution (or miracle) seems to be the Israeli strategy.
The ‘liberal’ Israeli contention that land must eventually be traded for peace, as it was for peace with Egypt, continues to be undermined – both by likes of Hamas and by Israel’s own right wing and zealot settlers. Both prefer a zero-sum game and gain oxygen from one another. And yet we all know that to continue to brutalise a people, some perhaps deservedly so but many not, inevitably begets the next uprising. Occupation almost always sows the seeds of it’s own demise. And yet Hamas has given Israel no other options.
Were Hamas truly interested in their own people they’d have asked to withdraw all their fighters and ceased defending Gaza. Instead they use their own as ‘shields’. They thus leave Israel with no choice, yet we should understand that is deliberate too and any sect delighting in martyrdom would see it so.
The only longer term chance, and it’s v slim, is somehow both sides find new leadership of remarkable quality that can also pull their respective people in different direction. Even then both would be constantly undermined by a small sabotaging element but it is the only hope probably in the lifetime of most experiencing this now for a longer term solution.
I agree with the writer (Mr Menon). The Israeli government, political class and public have no plan for the day after. Palestinian organization and public have no plan either, though perhaps events are favoring Hamas support among the Palestinian public (though it is unclear if they planed it). Events also favor the extreme right wing in Israel. But all this is unstable and unpredictable.
Hamas is a cancer, but a cancer cannot be cured by blows, it requires surgery and chemotherapy. Once hostilities end (hopefully soon) the neutralization of Hamas has to be fought politically, not by pure military means, but by a coordinated action of moderate Palestinian and Israeli parties, organizations and public, supported by the US, UK, European Union and neighboring Arab countries. Hamas extremism and the occupation of Palestinian territories must also be fought politically. Extremists cannot continue dictating events and narratives. But, there are no signs (yet) of such coordinated effort.
The Israeli and Palestinian societies are so interconnected that no advance in one side can succeed without feedback and support from the other, but they need external pressure to overcome inertia.
That’s all very nice, too bad it’s completely delusional.
Indeed. Netanyahu and the Israeli establishment have no real ‘day after’ plan, as eloquently pointed out here and also elsewhere by multiple observers.
Israel has no plan for Gaza?
Yes it has. It plan to ethnically cleanse it,
More like get rid of vermin
Ethically, not ethnically…
Well I have been downvoted but no one has left a substantive response.
The only possible interpretation is that this is because those that downvoted me accept this is the Israeli intention but do not like me drawing attention to it.
So why then oh wise sage of all things, do they not just level the place? Because they could should they desire it. Oh and I’ve downvoted you because you’re an antisemite who talks nonsense. Have a great day.
Not every criticism of Israeli policy is antisemitism. The word has been used that often recently in an attempt to shut down debate that’s it has become as meaningless as fascist or Islamophobic
Oh you dimwit.
If you look at the pictures they are in the process of levelling the place one section at a time.
They will make Gaza slowly uninhabitable and the population will dwindle.
Obviously they cannot be open about where they are heading with this. The optics would be so bad and all those currently justifying Israel’s actions would have no place to hide.
So you equate criticising Israel to being anti-Semitic.